General Conference has been wonderful, we look forward to having the sermons in written form so that we may study them. Half way through the morning session we had to leave to go to the servicemen's group where we showed a replay of Saturday's afternoon session for the soldiers. After the servicemen's group, we went back to the ward building and finished watching the final session.

This evening we visited the Herr family; their twin boys were delivered 5 weeks ago today; they were only 27 weeks along when they were born. They fight for their lives everyday, but so far they are making it.

Prior to General Conference this morning, we found 5 soldiers who we went looking for. We had a nice visit with a young lady who says she has not been very active; we invited her to come and get to know us. We also had a nice visit with a fellow who had asked that we look him up so he could continue investigating the church. We hope he comes out tomorrow.

We enjoyed conference today, it has been very inspiring and We've learned a lot that we can use in our visits with members of the church helping them stay strong and true to their covenants.

If you knew you were dying, if you knew that you were approaching the end of your life and that you only had a short time to say goodbye to those whom you love, what would you say, or what would you write? In the book of Mormon chapter 7 we can read what one prophet said to his people. First, he reminded them of who they are. Second, he reminded them of the great principle of repentance and that without it we cannot be saved. Third, he told them to lay down their weapons of war, which means to us today, to lay down our sins; put them aside, never take them up again. Fourth, we must believe in Jesus Christ, that he is the Son of God and that someday we will come before Him to be judged. If we are found guiltless, we will live eternally with Him in the presence of the Father. Mormon's entire dialogue was to prepare us for judgment so that we might dwell with Him in the presence of Father forever. So what would you say to your posterity?

Sister Gowans went to the dentist today to have the crown put on her tooth. We find out that our insurance does not cover crowns! Thank you Delta Dental Military Retiree Plan, I now owe the doctor $1400.

We met with a family this evening that we met with a couple of  months ago. We needed to go and encourage them, fellowship them and help them get back on an active track of spiritual growth.

This morning we had a Zone Development Meeting; so we had to leave the library after an hour and a half of service. The Zone Meeting was good, they are really trying to hone the Elder's and Sister's teaching skills to invite a strong Spirit into their meetings.


This afternoon we attended another graduation. We had 3 members graduate today, so they will be moving on. We will miss them.

This evening we met with another family whose husband will deploy in a couple of months. We hope that our briefings will be a blessing to them.

 The Grange family

 Brother Lape

 Brother Rangitch and Brother Lape

Brother Rangitch

Last evening we received a text message from the young Elders to set aside Thursday for a trip up to the Mission Home to have dinner with President and Sister Holm and to stay the night in honor of our meeting our baptismal goals. We texted back that we already had an appointment that evening with a family that we really needed to be with and that we did not feel right about putting a little party above the needs of a family we already had an appointment with. We called the Elders and explained to them our concerns; they agreed and said that they had the same concerns and would rather be to work that evening. We suppose that they will be staying too. Then this morning we received a call from the Assistants to the President asking if we were planning on coming, we answered no, we were not coming. Honestly, we would rather be magnifying our calling rather than having a pat on the back. There is not enough time in the day to do all that needs to be done; there are so many families that struggle and are hurting, we need to be there for them as much as possible.

This evening we met with two new families. One family was just baptized on Saturday evening. We had a nice visit with them and was able to leave them an appropriate message from Ether 12:27. Then we met with a mother and her daughter and daughter-in-law. The husband/father lives and works in Maryland and will probably be there until next spring or summer. The mother will eventually join him. That will leave the daughter, who is in nursing school and the national guard home with the daughter-in-law whose husband is waiting to get some medical issues taken care of before he enlists in the army. We made sure they all had our number if they should ever need us. This will be a good family to check up on from time-to-time.

This morning we did our typical Red Cross service. While Sister Gowans was doing her comments input into the computer, the computers went down, so she went up to the 6th floor to join Elder Gowans. He showed her how to do the job there, but she never had to wheel any patients out to the parking lot.

After returning home, Elder Gowans went to the Edmundson's home and mowed their lawn, so sister Edmundson wouldn't have to.

We had a nice FHE this evening. Elder Gowans presented their rock lesson to see if the participants had any suggestions on how to improve it. What is the rock lesson you ask? We place a large stone in the center of everyone being taught and show a photo of Michael Angelo's King David. We tell them the Michael Angelo carved King David out of one large stone. He did so by chiseling away everything that was not King David. Then we ask them to imagine themselves in the stone and ask them what would have to be chiseled away to find their perfect selves in the stone. So everything that has to be chiseled away would be all their imperfections, weaknesses and so forth. So that is the rock lesson.

The following photos are from our Baptism on Sunday.

 The font! We had to be creative to utilize the font for a proper baptism where both the candidate and the one performing the baptism could stand in the font together. They both stood at the far end and then Brother Potter had to sit and then lay back in order to be completely submerged.

 It says, "In Remembrance of Me".

 Elder Gowans walking Brother Potter back to the barracks.

Elder Yeakley, Brother Potter and Elder Nielson